Chapter 22

Dana’s turn:

I guess I should be used to chaos around here. I see what’s going on all the time. This time, though, first thing Monday morning.

“Dana, you need a student license.”

“I’ve been meaning to ... whenever...”

“Today’s a good day,” Cindy purveyor of chaos, said.

“Why today?”

“Because tomorrow morning I’m launching Lenya for Michigan, I think.”

“And this affects Dana exactly how?”

“I see where YOUR hubby is off to Atlanta with Laci over that bank’s computer conversions.”

“Ah, yes ... My dear husband is going off on the proverbial ‘business trip’ with a blonde co-worker. I was planning on sitting in the window and pining...”

Cindy giggled. “Call Jenn. Y’all could pine together. Seriously ... Call this number, see if they can squeeze you in for an afternoon appointment.”

Ed Allen’s turn:

Several years ago I learned to be philosophical when events get overwhelming. Sometimes, I actually succeed in that effort. If you can manage to inject some humor, it helps a little. Today’s lesson is: “Be careful what you wish for -- you may get it.”

Once upon a time, I wished I could find a brilliant, beautiful woman who loved me. And I wished to be independent, making a lot of money. And I wished to have lots of leisure time. All that. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, I guess, but the other two are about to overwhelm me. And those two revolve around Dana.

Oh yeah -- the third was something about “leisure time”. I didn’t get that at all.

Nope. Every day, it’s more and more intense programming biz, sometimes – occasionally - about power control systems, but mostly about banking. Yeah, banking -- go figure.

That happened when Dana went zooming in with Terri’s ultralight, rescuing a little girl, whose Daddy turned out to be a banking “mover and shaker”. “Unintended consequences”, I suppose.

It’s working me and Laci nearly to death, along with several Auburn interns, who are nearly saving our butts. And we’ve hired four Auburn graduates. They walked right off the podium, diplomas in hand, and right back into the beehive we’re using for 3Sigma Digital where we’d used them as interns – PAID interns – before graduation. We steer them (roughly) in the needed direction and turn ‘em loose. Laci steers them more than me, and she’s good at it.

Understand: We computer nerds are people who operate on the principle of “show me what you want, and then get the hell out of my office so I can work.” Banks and businesses are full of ‘legacy systems’: many old mainframes that just won’t die, often because the people who really knew the system have long ago retired.

I know that because I have some of those people on the payroll too.

Laci is like that, - “Okay, I see what you have. Now, just go back to your office and I’ll call you when we’re ready to show you stuff”. She also knows how to rock out over at the Pavilion -- surprised the hell out of me.

What’s really hilarious, Laci tells me – “So, okay, that HillBank job?”

“Yeah?”

“I put Gina Abercrombie on it,” she said.

Gina’s fresh out of Auburn. CompSci diploma on the wall. Nondescript brown-haired girl. Watch out for those.

“She’s kinda fresh, ain’t she?”

“Oh, yeah. I knew that, so I put Mizz Barker with ‘er.”

Mizz Bessie Barker’s almost seventy, retired, no degree, just forty years of starting at the first computer keyboards at her employer’s bank, rising to be THE systems guru.

Laci got that wry grin of hers, the one that I would’ve chased across the country if one, I didn’t have Dana and two, Laci wasn’t married to another WOMAN, especially one that I liked equally well – Jenn.

“I walked into that office and found TWO blue-haired women, one, seventy, one, twenty-two. Gina dyed HERS to match Mizz Bessie’s. And Gina said she’d been adopted.”

And now I have a picture of when those two get to meet with the people at HillBank.

So it’s a HAPPY operation.

In the evenings when I finally get “home”, Dana feeds me, and then ravishes my poor carcass. Now THAT, sir, is a stress reliever. Little grey-eyed blonde, who’s smarter than me. Just turned sixteen, and I think she’s going to get her BSEE by late summer.

Today’s exercise: I walked into the apartment, smelling GOOD stew, and Dana, who jumped on me, and kissed me nearly back thru the door. DC (of course) simply stared at me, indignantly. Clearly I have interrupted his solitude.

Dana said, “Look, Ed!” And she held up a pilot’s logbook. She said, “Cindy gave me this. Now that I’m sixteen, she can start to sign off on my hours! And when I turn seventeen, I’ll get my LICENSE, like everybody else!”

She jumped down and said, “Go take a shower, while I put these rolls in the oven.” And turning away, she stepped toward the kitchen, dutifully followed by DC, who has finally found a human somewhat worthy of his attention.

Phew! Much needed shower and shave, and now wearing shorts and a T-shirt, I returned to the kitchen, seeing Dana tossing a salad. She instructed, “Ed, set out plates, bowls, and silverware. It’s about ready.”

God, I love this woman. Girl. Sprite. Whatever.

Having ladled up the stew, we sat down to eat. Absolutely delicious, of course, and when I commented, she told me, “This is Kim’s recipe -- pretty good, don’t you think?” Lord, what one of them doesn’t think of, another one does. I think they feed off each other.

She said, “Ed, good news and bad news. Cindy wants me to ride right seat with her, for the next couple of months, whenever I can. She can sign off for a lot of hours if I do it, and her “instructor time” is getting limited. She says the log-book will look a little strange, showing PC-12 time, but it’ll work. And once I get her approval for 152 solo-flight, I can build those hours whenever my schedule allows. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

I had to say, “Dana, if it makes you happy, it makes me happy. And thinking about it, once you get licensed, you can be the chauffeur for me and Laci. That would solve a lot of problems. But that means we need to start looking for a bigger bird.”

“SQUEAL!” And I know what comes next. It’s unlikely, but maybe I’ll survive.

Dana’s turn:

0700. I saw my dear sweet Ed off, him and Laci both, actually. If I didn’t know both of them, there’s room for some lurid excursions of thought there. But they’re gone and I meet Cindy as we open the door to the BIG hangar.

There, sparkling in the illumination of a bay full of LED lights, is Lenya, the newest Pilatus. We hitch up a little battery powered tow motor. It sucks up to the nosewheel of Lenya and lets us ease her out into the daylight. After we do that, the tow motor goes back into the hangar. When I turn around, Cindy hands me a little iPad.

“Checklist’s on here. It’s long for this thing. For the trainer, it’s one side of a 5x8 card. Let’s get started.”

It involves quite a bit of bending and stooping and peering in little places filled with interesting devices. A flashlight helps. Running commentary from Cindy helps, too. Learn, Dana. You always said you wanted to learn stuff.

“And that’s the preflight on the outside,” Cindy said.

“I call it good. Two wings, three wheels, five propeller blades...”

We put up the ladder we used, added the fluids we’d collected – you drain a bit from several sumps, look at it – “No goldfish” – and then we dump it into a collection can to dispose of later, and the push of a button, the hangar’s door closes. Neat. I push the button.

Now the door’s open, and we’re inside. Electronic everything’s powered up. “Now we can switch to the plane’s checklist. You do this...”

Doing ‘this’ was done from the throne – the co-pilot’s seat. Nothing like it in the world, I don’t think.

“Okay, now, here’s our flight. Like I showed you in the office, we’re set up from here clear to Michigan, direct, by GPS. We have the altitude info. Radio frequencies. Reporting points. It’s all in there. Should be pretty straight forward. And now, we upload it to the nav suite like this...”

I heard one of the four-wheelers show up. That got us Derek and Rachel and Vicki. Mandy came along just after I saw Jerry’s SUV cross in front of us. Two heads. That’d be Terri and Jerry.

Cindy handled the cabin instructions with “Y’all know about the baggage. Jerry, make sure it’s tied down. Keep your stuff stowed until we get out of the pattern. And last call for the bathroom. Lenya doesn’t have one. There’s a plastic bucket...”

A chorus of “EWWWW!”

“Anybody? Before we close the door?”

“We’re good,” Jerry said.

“Now we know the rules about the intercom. It’s a party line, but if you hear the radio, NOTHING you say carries on.”

Nods.

“And Dana’s my co-pilot. You can be properly worshipful later. If we go inverted, that’s part of the training regimen.”

And I know that the Pilatus is NOT licensed for aerobatics. We all know about Cindy and the Stearman and Mandy’s illegal loop. I understand that Cindy bought herself a Stearman and it’ll be here mid-summer.

She got back into the cockpit, buckled herself in, said, “Okay. Cockpit checklist.”

That’s another two pages. Then it’s engine starting, which, by this time is almost anti-climactic. I mean, we’ve just about taken the plane apart and examined individual pieces. Starting. Is the prop area clear? Gosh, I hope so. Check the annunciator display. No warnings.

Cindy smiled. “I’ll let you start it. Push the button.”

Whiny noises followed, along with Cindy’s finger. “Watch this temperature. If it heads towards a thousand, pull the power lever back to cut-off.”

It didn’t. We worked our way through the list and found ourselves at the end of the runway, then it’s “Okay, follow me on take-off. We’re looking for eighty knots to rotate.”

And just like that (snort) we’re flying. Climbing. Flight plan activated. Past a thousand feet, Cindy says “Now we cheat. I turn on the flight direction, and she flies herself.”